open source
Technology Coordinator
Organization:
Sanctuary for Independent Media/New York Media Alliance VISTA Name:
Chris Gang
Program Start:
9/2009
Program End:
9/2010
Project Description:
We are seeking to recruit a Technology Coordinator who will help organize our audio, video and computer infrastructure and create a strong technology platform on which we can build for the future.
The Technology Coordinator would work with staff, college interns and volunteers to develop and maintain the facility. Most of our equipment was donated; we consciously avoid cutting edge applications to the extent possible to avoid the problems commonly experienced by early adopters that we do not have the staff to troubleshoot. A major benefit of this strategy is that we can take advantage of cast-off equipment with plenty of life remaining. Our plan for technology upgrades is to constant solicit donations in good working order to replace dated and aging inventory. We use earned income and grants to selectively purchase modern technology when absolutely necessary.
We’re now at the point at which we need to inventory our gear, eliminating anything of questionable usefulness. The remaining technology needs to be properly installed and documented, with a training plan developed and implemented. Finally, a technology plan needs to be developed to guide future strategy.
This project will increase community engagement because media technology is at the forefront of our outreach and training efforts. Virtually everything we do revolves around the technology infrastructure we have put into place.
Goal 1: Assess our technology infrastructure, inventory and organize it, install and troubleshoot gear, dispose of surplus items, develop user manuals and training procedures, and work on development of short and long term technology plans
Project Outcome:
Chris Gang achieved the goals of assessing, inventorying and organizing our technology infrastructure. He also achieved the goal of developing user manuals and training procedures, and helped us move forward with our short and long term technology plans.
Chris vastly improved our internet infrastructure, particularly in the area of social media and open source software. In order to ensure that it can be sustained, he trained staff and volunteers and maintains a consulting relationship with us.
Chris also helped to develop our live video web-streaming capability. After going to several conferences and workshops, he noted the importance of web-streaming in the digital age, and strategized with our Executive Director to create an action plan to bring this capability to fruition. Although beyond the scope of our proposed project, this accomplishment in fact helps sustain our infrastructure, mission and outreach. Also, Chris Gang helped to develop our media archive infrastructure, after observing the need and creating a system, both in the physical space and with a computer interface.
Website and Database Building
Organization:
California Coalition for Rural Housing VISTA Name:
Rebecca White
Program Start:
9/2006
Program End:
9/2007
Project Description:
Goal 1: Increase the capacity of rural communities and the organizations that serve them to utlize new information technologies for community development endeavors.
Goal 2: Assist in maintaining and improving on organization’s technology capacity
Goal 3: Develop and maintain a housing policy clearinghouse and searchable database for communities and community based organizations that are looking to adopt policies that will increase the stock of decent affordable housing.
Project Outcome:
In February Cal Rural Housing completed working on a 3 month project with Fresno County Community Development Division in which we provided technical assistance in developing an electronic database to track their CDBG expenditures. The County had never tracked these expenditures other then in a word document. Rebecca inputted the information we obtained in a word document into Excel, analyzed, charted and developed maps for the department. We then provided maps for a presentation to the Board of Supervisors that shows expenditures by community and by district (attached). The County should now be able to more easily track Federal funding using this database and produce charts and map in a more timely fashion. Rebecca spent a majority of her time revamping our website and upgrading our Rural Toolbox. She upgraded our old site using Drupal and developed a searchable database of more than 130 California Inclusionary Housing programs, the first of its kind in the US. The database provides summaries of characteristics for each policy. Users are able to search for these summaries by jurisdiction name or by more than 30 other variables. Rebecca also developed an introductory tutorial on using open-source desktop GIS (MapWindow) that can be used as either a GIS viewer or an advanced should be live by August-September.
Software Engineer
Organization:
Community Software Lab VISTA Name:
Chris Sacca
Program Start:
9/2004
Program End:
9/2005
Project Outcome:
SINGLE NETWORK-WIDE USERNAME (LDAP SERVER)
This project moved us from a system that involved either multiple passwords for a user to remember for our different services, or synchronizing files between machines. Under the new system, users have one password, there is only a single box housing all the user information, and data about users is easily associable with their account, allowing us to do organization-wide address books and the like.
BETTER EMAIL AND SPAM FILTERING (EMAIL SERVER)
After the LDAP Server, our email service was transferred off of the one box we were running all our services off of and moved to a much more powerful dedicated box. The new system involved keeping all the information about email accounts in the LDAP Server, the beginnings of a unified login page for all our services, and better Spam and virus filtering where Spam is quarantined online rather than sent to the user. Currently, our Spam filtering is about 99.18% efficient, with a false positive rate of 0.31%
SYSTEM SCRIPTS
Chris designed a handful of different Perl scripts to automate and / or facilitate the administration of our systems. These included a reworking of out account creation script to handle the new LDAP Server, various small backup and synchronization scripts, and scripts to make sure that current configuration files and the files in our backup were in sync.
CREATED BACKUP SYSTEM FOR SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
Although we had checklists for setting our many systems up in the case that they failed and needed to be rebuilt, the instructions were complicated, and were not always compete. With this project, we attempted to put all the important configuration files into a backup system so that if a machine died, the configuration files could be replaced without rewriting them from scratch.
FINDING AN OPEN SOURCE ALTERNATIVE TO MS EXCHANGE
Implementation has just stared. Exchange Server is a powerful group collaboration and organization tool, but it is not aimed at small non-profits. It is non-free software and has high costs. The goal of this project is to take one of the open source alternatives to Exchange and implement it for one of our clients. The system will allow our client to use the full powers of their MS Outlook email client.
BECOMING A DEBIAN LINUX DEVELOPER
Chris is getting certified as a Debian GNU/Linux developer. As a Debian developer, Chris can add software we wrote to the Debian software repository. The hundreds of thousands of people using Debian GNU/Linux can then easily install our software.
Software Engineer
Organization:
Lowell Telecommunications Corporation VISTA Name:
April Carvalho
Program Start:
8/2002
Program End:
8/2004
Project Description:
1) Find, create, install, configure and maintain server based software.
2) Find, create and maintain server based documentation.
3) Test, code and document in support of open source projects.
4) Learn and teach software engineering and system administration.
5) Become familiar with the goals and needs of the organizations we serve.
6) Guide other workers (as needed)
Project Outcome:
I’ve run two more sessions of the “Intro to Web Forms” curriculum, which has been a success with the LCTC community. The only barrier to our success has been the lack of publicity in the course, which we are hoping to improve in future runnings. The advantage of having a set, web based curriculum is that another member can pick up this course and teach it without having to recreate the course from scratch.
After starting work on the UTEC project in the second quarter, our first web database application rolled out on April 16, 2003. This was a great opportunity to work with a Non profit that help us iron out our software development process and be enthusiastic with our end product. Since then we have made several major changes, including recreating the user interface to a more malleable design and adding functionality as the user requests.
Fellow Vista David Siegal and I have been working on this project as a team effort.
Recently I have been working on system administration tasks. One example is making our lab more available to volunteers, by ensuring that all workstations have the proper software. Once finished, our website designers can come in whenever they need to and use the latest software that we can provide them.
Software Engineer
Organization:
Lowell Telecommunications Corporation VISTA Name:
David Siegal
Program Start:
8/2003
Program End:
8/2004
Project Description:
1) Find, create, install, configure and maintain server based software.
2) Find, create and maintain server based documentation.
3) Test, code and document in support of open source projects.
4) Learn and teach software engineering and system administration.
5) Become familiar with the goals and needs of the organizations we serve.
6) Guide other workers (as needed)
Project Outcome:
David Siegal has worked to develop a template database to track client facility use for one of the Consortium partner agencies (UTEC) and modified and scripted form handlers that allow NPOs to collect online info.
David Siegal also switched the volunteer hour tracking database to a web-based client facility usage template.
Software Engineer
Organization:
Community Software Lab VISTA Name:
Kevin Loechner
Program Start:
11/2002
Program End:
8/2003
Project Description:
1) Find, create, install, configure and maintain server based software.
2) Find, create and maintain server based documentation.
3) Test, code and document in support of open source projects.
4) Learn and teach software engineering and system administration.
5) Become familiar with the goals and needs of the organizations we serve.
6) Guide other workers (as needed)
Project Outcome:
Kevin Loechner has modified a pre-existing group calendaring program to be used by LTC as a community calendar.
April Cavalho and Kevin Leochner created a class evaluation database and piloted it with two of their Winter form classes.
Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN)
Website:
http://www.cuwin.net/ Location:
Urbana, IL
CUWiN (the Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network) is a world-renowned coalition of wireless developers and community volunteers committed to providing low-cost, do-it-yourself, community-controlled alternatives to contemporary broadband models. CUWiN is fiscally sponsored by the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, a non-profit 501c3.
Our mission is to develop decentralized, community-owned networks that foster democratic cultures and local content. Through advocacy and through our commitment to open source technology, we support organic networks that grow to meet the needs of their community.
To achieve that mission CUWiN maintains international and domestic partnerships with dozens of research institutions, not-for-profit organizations, community groups, businesses, universities, and government institutions. To inquire about becoming a CUWiN partner, send an email to cu-wireless-support@cuwireless.net.
Nonprofit Software Development Summit, 2009
When:
November 18, 2009 - November 20, 2009
Where:
Oakland, CA The 2009 Nonprofit Software Development Summit will be the third annual convening of people and organizations developing software tools, web applications and other technology to support social justice causes. Bringing together a diverse range of users, developers, technologists, managers, eRiders, integrators and other practitioners who self-identify under the umbrella of “developing nonprofit software”, the 2009 DevSummit will provide an opportunity both to gather as a community and to take stock of the field, while building connections and capacity.